Unpacking KITLV Special Collections

This is a dataset containing biographical information about individuals and organisations involved in the formation of the KITLV’s (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) collection of Oriental manuscripts between 1851 and 2014. This information is drawn from various archival sources and publications. The dataset is intended to encourage further research into the provenance and history of Indonesian manuscripts and manuscript collections by making biographical information more accessible.

Please refer to the user guide for further details on the contents of the dataset and how to use it. The dataset is available in CSV format and was created for the project ‘Unpacking KITLV Special Collections: Colonial histories, object biographies, knowledge practices, and local agency’, which ran from March 2024 to December 2026 at the KITLV. The dataset consists of records on: (1) Individuals (biographical data on individuals and organisations); (2) Manuscripts (information on the manuscripts to which contributions were made); (3) Collection context (role of the contributors and context of acquisition).